


Room Assignments

by 13th_blackbird



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Thrawn - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Academy Era, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Pre-Relationship, and they were ROOMMATES, bunk beds, oh my god they were roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 11:31:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14260038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13th_blackbird/pseuds/13th_blackbird
Summary: Eli didn't want to share a room with Thrawn, but having him as a roommate leads to more mutual understanding between them than he expected.





	Room Assignments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anthean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthean/gifts).



> Thanks to tristesses for the beta (and the encouragement!), and to anthean for the prompt - hope you like how it turned out. :)

 

_ You've been assigned a split double.  _ Talk about adding insult to injury, Eli thought, as he opened the door to the room he would be sharing with Thrawn for the next three months. 

It was shockingly small, barely room for one person, let alone two. Eli had known that Coruscant was overpopulated, but this was ridiculous. There was one window, overlooking the courtyard outside, and displaying the ever-present view of skyscrapers and lines of speeder traffic outside the Academy grounds. 

The beds were bunked to save what little space there was in the room, despite the low ceiling. Somehow, Thrawn had gotten there first and had already claimed the bottom bunk. Obviously, from the way he was stretched out casually on it, reading something. He looked up when Eli came in and merely nodded at him before going back to his reading. There was nowhere else to do it; the room was bare of other furniture. There wouldn’t have been space for two desks. There must be a common space for studying, somewhere. Eli would have to find it as soon as possible. 

Eli had never shared a room before. At Myomar, they'd all had singles, since it was a smaller academy and space wasn't at a premium the way it was on Coruscant. As an only child, he'd been spared room-sharing when he was growing up, too. 

And now, he'd be sharing a room with Thrawn, of all people. A Chiss, someone out of legend. The person who'd utterly thrown his life off track. For now, anyway.

_ Three months,  _ Eli reminded himself, placing his bag on the floor.  _ It's not that long, really. _

 

_ \-- _

 

After a week, Eli had decided that having a roommate was weird. Having a roommate who was an alien was even weirder, and having a roommate you felt partially responsible for was the weirdest of all. 

They were walking back from a protocol lecture. They seemed to end up together most of the time, now, between having all the same classes and living together, it was hard to avoid. Especially given their statuses as pariahs from the other cadets. 

Eli glanced sidelong at Thrawn, walking placidly beside him. He'd started to think he could read the Chiss, a little, even though he was so impassive, from a human's point of view. Today, he looked... frustrated. The tells were there, subtly: a certain tightness around his glowing red eyes, a rigidity to his posture. 

Eli knew how that felt. Their adjustment period over the last week had been difficult; all of the classes were nearly over, so there was a lot of work to catch up on, and everyone, from the Commandant on down, wasn’t shy about letting them know how much of a hassle it was to have two new cadets at this point in the year. This day, in particular, had been a whirlwind of catch-up assignments and openly hostile stares. 

And then it started to rain.

They both picked up their pace at the same time as the rain began to fall. Coruscant was temperate, but cooler overall than Lysatra or Myomar, and the weather could shift at strange intervals among the tightly packed skyscrapers.

The rain got heavier almost instantly, and they both broke into a run. Thrawn was faster, and Eli worked to catch up.

It wasn’t just rain, on Coruscant, it had to be  _ cold _ rain. 

They arrived in their tiny room, Eli a little breathless, Thrawn seeming like he could have kept running for miles, both of them completely soaked. The water ran down Eli’s back, under his uniform tunic, plastering his hair to his face. 

The Chiss looked dignified, as always -- even initially, as a long-haired exile in cuffs and rags, he’d seemed like he was taking the crew of the Strikefast as visitors, assessing their worth, rather than the other way around. But with water dripping off his blue-black hair, blinking the droplets out of his face, he seemed distinctly...ruffled. 

Eli tried not to drip water on anything important, pulling out a towel for himself and handing one to Thrawn. 

“Thank you, Cadet Vanto,” Thrawn said.

“Sure,” Eli said. Thrawn was nothing if not considerate, at least.  

They stripped out of their wet uniforms to the clothes they wore underneath. That was something else that was odd about having a roommate. It wasn’t like they were going to go to the communal refresher every time they wanted to change. Thrawn didn’t seem to have any problem with the lack of privacy. Eli had resolved not to, either. 

He’d found the common area for studying, but he hadn’t used it yet. He actually preferred stretching out in his bunk to do his reading while Thrawn did the same. 

“Perfect end to another perfect day,” Eli said, climbing up into his bunk with his datapad. He instantly regretted the sarcasm. 

“You dislike it here,” Thrawn said, from the bottom bunk. In Sy Bisti. 

Eli sighed. He did dislike it. But it wasn’t Thrawn’s fault, really. He replied in the same language, “I guess it’s probably worse for you, right? And shouldn’t we speak Basic?”

“I’d rather not,” Thrawn admitted. “It has been more of an effort to continuously translate these past few days than I expected. And I don’t believe it’s  _ worse _ for me, but I must admit, I did not expect to have to attend classes at this point in my career,” Thrawn said, dryly. “Nor to--”

“--share a room?” Eli finished. 

A pause. “Indeed,” Thrawn said. Eli had wondered about how Thrawn had felt about that. It was hard to say how old the Chiss was, compared to a human, but from what he’d said, Thrawn had had a years-long career among his people already. The Academy might teach him something valuable, culturally, but for him to be among students, after that? It had to be irritating.  

“I didn’t expect to room together, either. Not that I mind, exactly,” Eli added after a moment passed. “I’d rather room with you than anyone else here.” As he said it, he realized it was true. He probably wouldn’t really talk to anyone if he were here alone. 

But then again, if he hadn’t met the Chiss in the first place, he’d still be at Myomar. 

The rain pattered against the thin dorm walls, and Thrawn didn’t reply. “I just wish the weather wasn’t so miserable here, sometimes,” Eli muttered. 

“It is not like this where you are from,” Thrawn said. It seemed like an invitation to say more.  

“No,” Eli said, taking the opening, and smiling to himself. “Where I’m from, on Lysatra, it’s warm most of the time. If it rains, it’s short showers. The sun’s right back out.” He probably wouldn’t go home again for the next few years. Maybe for a short visit, after he got his initial assignment.  

“It is colder on my home world,” Thrawn said. He’d hardly offered any information about himself since their initial meeting. “It does not rain, but snows frequently. There are times of no sunlight, but other times when the sun is harsh on the snow…” He trailed off, sounding almost hesitant. 

Eli felt a pang of something he hadn’t felt since he’d first started at Myomar -- homesickness. For a minute, he closed his eyes, and it seemed like when he opened them, he’d be staring at the ceiling of his bedroom at home. Silly, of course. He’d been at Myomar for the better part of three years. When he’d left Lysatra, he’d been excited, not homesick. 

But he could see his home again, if he wanted to. If he chose. Thrawn couldn’t. 

“Sounds...nice,” Eli offered, ashamed of how much he’d resented this assignment all of a sudden. 

“I doubt you truly think so,” Thrawn said, but Eli thought he could hear a hint of humor in Thrawn’s voice. “Given what you’ve shared of your homeworld, Csilla probably would not suit you.” 

“Probably not,” Eli agreed. “But it sounds like you miss it. I get that.” 

“I believe you do, Cadet Vanto,” Thrawn said. Eli wished for a moment that he could see the Chiss’s face as he spoke from the other bunk. His voice was neutral, but Eli thought he could detect something new in it. A softening of his tone. 

Eli let the conversation drop, lapsing into a familiar, but somehow friendlier, silence. Maybe having a roommate wasn’t all that bad. 

  
  


 


End file.
